Stepping In
by VegetaCold
Summary: Danny's dad becomes abusive and Vlad sees his opportunity to step in. Loosely based off a two-shot I wrote called IOUs and had a few people suggest I continue it. So...ta da! Rated M for sexual situations and abuse and that type of thing.
1. Chapter 1

"Dad," I said.

He stopped briefly and turned around to look at me. On his drunken face, especially in his drunken _eyes_, I saw the undiluted anger, anger which was always there and had been lately morphing into rage. And behind that anger I saw another emotion displayed, one that seemed more insignificant and diluted compared to the former—surprise.

I guessed this was because it was the first time I had interrupted him while he beat my mom since the first _and_ lasttime I had tried to intervene and he had given me one hundred _whacks_ with my own belt. I had always been too afraid after that day a year ago to say anything to my dad, and I generally tried to disappear from the room when he began to beat her, even if I felt awful doing so. Sometimes, dad made me watch, and I wasn't allowed to slink out of the room. When this happened, I didn't speak. I simply watched in silence because I knew it was what mom wanted me to do, and I tried to remove myself from the situation, let my mind drift somewhere else.

Today, dad wanted me to watch as he beat her, but I couldn't remove myself from this dark room this time, because this time it was worse. This time, my dad didn't just beat her; he raped her as well. And this time, I found it impossible to keep silent, even if it meant I may be whipped. The reality of everything was simple—I couldn't sit here and watch my mom be humiliated like this. Physical abuse was one thing, but sexual abuse was something else completely.

My dad turned around and glared at me, his face twisted in drunken rage. He was on top of my mom, just beginning to rip off her light blue, skin-tight suit.

"You got something to say, Danny Boy?" he inquired drunkenly. "Danny Boy" was what he called me after he had had a beer or two.

"Dad," I began timidly, scare shitless but knowing I couldn't let him do this to mom. "Dad, I, uh, think halftime just ended...if you wanted to watch, uh, I could make you something to eat."

He looked at me, his features hardened, his eyes now glowing with something like suspicion, as if he thought I had some _grand plan_ to poison a plate of nachos and then sit back and watch as he withered away in front of the Monday night football game…and maybe that suspicion wasn't so farfetched, because my wish, what I closed my eyes and hoped for as I blew out the candle in the cupcake Tucker and Sam got for me for my last birthday, was that my father would die, somehow. I wanted more than anything to come home from school one day and have my mother greet me at the door, tears in her eyes but a smile on her face, and say to me, excitedly and joyously and in disbelief, "_Danny, he's dead! Your father is dead! He was hit by a car/gunned down by a madman/drunk and tumbled off a cliff/held hostage and wasted/choked to death/buried alive/mauled by lions/burned to a crisp in a fire/victim of a robbery/poisoned/sunk in quicksand/hung/beheaded/drown in a river and now he's dead!_"

No one could ever understand how much I wanted to hear those words.

"You can't cook for shit, Danny Boy," he said in that same drunken voice which was now filled with skepticism.

"I can make popcorn, Dad."

He made a sound of disgust and waved his hand. "I don't give a _fuck _about the game, Danny Boy."

I looked at my mom. Our eyes met. She was staring at me with an expression of frenzied terror…but I knew it was not for her own safety—it was for mine. She looked at me and in her eyes I could see the question that I knew she must be thinking, _Danny, what are you doing?_ In my own eyes, I tried to answer that question, _I can't watch him do this to you_. But I knew that wasn't what mom wanted. She always put my safety before her own, and when my dad made me watch as he beat her or…this, she wanted for me more than anything to silently watch as I was told so he didn't hurt me. When he went to the bar at seven in the morning, before I left for school, she always told me, "Danny, if you come home and he's doing something to me, go up to your room and don't come down until I get you. If he makes you watch, don't say a word." So I could understand why she looked so frightened now, but I _couldn't _watch him do this to her, despite what either of them wanted. And I didn't care if it meant I got hurt in the process.

"Dad, you…you watched the first half of the game…don't you want to see how it turns out?"

"I told you, I don't give a _fuck_! I don't watch football like your damn uncle!" he hollered, spit flying from his lips and landing on my face. I was too frightened to wipe it away.

"But Dad, I, uh, thought you wanted to see the Packers get their "asses beat into the ground" like you said?"

The back of his hand connected with my right cheek, causing my head to jerk violently and spit to fly from my own mouth this time. My mom cried out in terror, and stood up from the bed, even though I knew she knew my dad could have killed her for doing so. In the mirror on the dresser across the room, I saw my reflection, saw the huge red hand-print that resided on my cheek and that had begun to sting. My dad grabbed the belt that hung on a peg in the closet and I heard my mom moan quietly, knowing what was to come, more afraid for me than _I_ was myself.

"_Don't you _tell_ me what I said_!" he screamed, and brought the belt down on my right cheek. There was a sound—_whaaaaaack!_—and I thought this sound was worse than the actual pain itself.

My mom shrieked. As he brought the belt down on my face again, she pounced on his back, trying to pry the belt out of his hands, and it was by _far _the boldest thing she had done since he'd started drinking a year and a half ago. But he wasn't focused on her anymore, and he simply ignored her as his attention was turned to me and he brought the belt down on my body again and again. Mom tried, she _fought_,to get that belt away from him, but he was so much stronger and bigger than her and he didn't let up, and he whipped me everywhere there was to be whipped—my face, my thighs, my chest and stomach, my back, my butt, my arms—for nearly an hour, my mom screaming and begging and weeping all the while, until my body was covered with dark-purple lash marks, some bleeding. I lay on the ground near the bed on my stomach, trying to gather some strength. I thought distantly, _Come on, Danny, if you can just _go ghost_!_

My mom was now pounding on his back with both fists even though it looked like he was through beating me (he had tossed the belt to the side) and shrieking every cuss word in the book at him, enraged, frankly astonishing _both _my father and I. He turned away from me, grabbed my mother, and flung her onto the bed which such force that she crashed into the headboard and sent a splintering crack up the middle of it.

I lay on the floor and listened as he brutally raped her, his moans and grunts and her shrieks of pain and helpless sobs amplified, as if there were microphones attached to them and the speakers were in my head, echoing endlessly.

I lay there and thought, "_You could have stopped this, Danny. You could have saved her. If only you'd gone ghost._"

The next day, after my dad left for the bar, my mom slathered my face with a cream that was the same color as my skin. She sent me to school in a long-sleeved t-shirt.

* * *

VC: Don't give Jack an axe!

Vegeta: HA!


	2. Chapter 2

I didn't want to make my mom cook breakfast for me that morning because I knew she was both physically and emotionally drained, and before I reported to homeroom, I went into the cafeteria to grab something to eat. I always stood in the same line; one of the lunch ladies knew me, because I always came here on the mornings that followed my mother's beatings, and I think she had an idea of what was going on in my home, though she never said anything—instead, when I'd go up to the register, she appeared to be charging it to my account but when I checked online it appeared I'd never purchased a single breakfast. I did feel guilty, sometimes even sheepish, carrying a tray loaded up with food to the register while knowing it was completely free. But she did not realize how much I appreciated it, because I needed to eat and if I'd rung up even the smallest charge on my father's credit card and he saw it, my mother would be beaten and I'd be whipped. I thanked her every time I came in for breakfast. She would smile sadly in return and nod silently. Her name was Delores.  
I feebly ambled up to the register, the usual food piled on my tray: cinnamon rolls and cereal and milk and juice and bread and cream cheese. I set the relatively heavy tray down on the long metal counter.

"Hi," I mumbled shyly, not looking at her, _never _looking at her.

Delores was really in pretty good shape for her age, I thought, although I didn't know just how old she actually was. She looked to be in her late-forties or maybe early-fifties, a little older than the snake who currently sat in the mayor's seat, my "uncle" Vlad Masters. Even though her hair was graying and was constantly tangled in a messy bun, it looked silky and well-kept. And even after so many years of working at Casper High as a lunch lady, sitting behind this counter—she'd been here the day I first entered as a freshman, and I'm almost a junior now—her blue eyes never dulled.

That was, before my dad started drinking and I came in for breakfast on the mornings after he beat her. When she saw me wander in, looking lost and broken and _tired_, her eyes always dulled. And this morning was no different.

"Hi, Danny," she said softly, her voice ringing out with sadness. "Breakfast, I see."

Under any other circumstances, to anyone else, this woman would have seemed like such an idiot for stating something so obvious. But Delores and I both knew that it meant so much more than just _breakfast_. It meant a beating.

"Yeah," I said quietly, sighing involuntarily, "breakfast."

I'd gotten here later than I usually did because my mom was waiting to dress me and apply that makeup until my dad left, and he left a lot later than he usually did. He'd had a beer in his hand when he appeared in the kitchen doorway. He eyed me drunkenly, most likely studying the bruises he'd given me, and then he came up to me and patted me on the head, a little too roughly but not intentionally, I think.

"Dan," he'd grumbled, "you don't let those bastards at the school see this shit now."

"I won't, Dad."

"They'd take you away from me, you know that, Dan?"

"Yeah, I know that."

"And I love your ass too much, Danny Boy." Another pat.

"I love you too, Dad."

He looked at the clock on the wall above the stove and saw it was almost an hour later than he usually left. "Ah, fuck, I gotta get to the goddamn bar."

Delores was looking about cautiously and I realized she was scanning for other students who could be listening in, but all the kids who came here in the mornings were probably in class by now, probably listening to Mr. Lancer lecture them about the importance of literature and blah, blah, blah. I almost felt like a rebel being here so late into the morning, almost felt like Sam, who cut both of her classes that ran during the four periods of lunch and showed up at all of them, drinking whiskey from a water bottle at the empty table in the far corner of the lunch room.

When she saw that we were alone, she leaned in and said, more like a statement than a question, "He started beating you."

I paused momentarily, a little shocked, because I thought my mom had done a pretty good job caulking me with foundation and powder in my skin-tone. "Why do you say that?"

"You must have smudged some of the makeup with your hand."

I looked down, and sure enough, there was a smear of cream-colored makeup on the back of my hand. I stared at it intensely. She sighed.

"Danny," Delores said, her voice soft and compassionate, "you need to tell someone about this."

"I can't," I said simply, still staring down at the smudge on my hand.

"Why not?"

"I just can't."

"Danny, look, I don't know what he did to you, but you're swollen and from what I can see your skin is black and blue. Danny," Delores cried, her face dawning an expression of horror as she uttered the words, "he could have killed you."

"But he didn't."

"He could have, and he still could. You need to get help."

"Look, I appreciate how much you care about me. I really do. And I appreciate that you haven't told anyone yet, because if you did, he really _would_ kill me."

"Why, Danny? What did he say?"

"Look," I said again, grabbing my tray. "I have to get to class. I'm already late."

She sighed sadly, looking down at her hands. "All right, Danny. You're my favorite student, but I pray I won't see you tomorrow morning."

"Hopefully," I said, and walked away with the tray.

On the way to class, I stopped at the bathrooms to fix my smeared makeup. My mom had packed extra.


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of the day passed relatively quickly and pretty easily; thankfully, the makeup I had reapplied stayed in its place, and I wasn't questioned by anyone other than Delores about the bruises. Tucker and Sam might have, but I never gave them the chance, because I only saw them at lunch and I made a point to avoid them, sitting by myself in the hallway while I ate the free lunches I had also managed to secure somewhere between now and a year and a half ago and writing stories, something I'd started doing at consequently the same time. The mornings after my father beat me, especially on the days I had to go to school, were painful because I was still very sore; despite the fact that my school did not allow you to carry painkillers with you, I did anyway, because I wasn't going to go to the nurse everyday—my mother forbid it, but made sure I swallowed three or four of them before I left for school and stuffed extra in my pencil case, advising that I be careful and keep them hidden. Today was no different. I had felt better for maybe the first half of the day, but by my last class, I thought I would vomit because I was in so much pain.

On the way home, I did.

I had been maybe a fourth of the way there when the urge—one that was sadly very familiar—came, and because I was walking along a well-traveled strip of sidewalk where I would be visible to anyone who'd been outside that afternoon, I darted into the woods, fell onto my knees, and threw up the turkey sandwich and soup I'd choked down for lunch, the pain in my throat so terrible I'd hardly been able to swallow. The sound of my vomiting was so loud that it stirred the birds from where they rested in their perches in the trees, and I was sure anyone nearby could hear it, but I was reasoning that I'd rather that than have them _see _it as well.

Well, I had been spot on in assuming they'd heard. Apparently the sound was so loud and alarming that there had been a small commotion, people urging one another to go in and check to see if I was okay but all too afraid to. At least, that was how the commotion _began_, because soon the focus had shifted from the teenage boy vomiting in the nearby bushes to one of the various ghosts that had picked this oh-so-appropriate time to attack the streets of Amity Park. Clutching my midsection as I threw up repeatedly, I heard Spectra's soft but undeniably malicious voice ring out as she terrorized the people of my town with her disgusting pig of an assistant. Groaning, I had forced myself to stagger to my feet again, using every ounce of strength I could muster, attempting to contain more vomit but relatively unsuccessfully as I went ghost.

It took awhile, but I managed to amble out into the street again—unwisely, I might point out—as I quickly wiped the vomit from my lips on the back of my hand. I won't lie—I was absolutely terrified, because Spectra was already a pretty formidable opponent under the best of circumstances; I could have injected myself with steroids before our fight and she still would have landed a few punches on me, or kicks with those sharp high-heels of hers, so as you've probably come to realize, I didn't exactly stand much of a chance in my current state of not-so-well-being. Still, I'd reasoned that it was my duty to protect the town, and sick I may be, I was still better capable of doing so than anyone else who roamed the streets that day.

"Spectra," I managed to call, feeling winded and incredibly dizzy, sure I would faint right then and there, but for a while I managed to remain conscious.

She turned around and her eyes brightened significantly with the light of one who is met with the chance to slowly murder the person who has killed their mother or father, or something like that—the deranged excitement that makes your eyes dance wildly and your teeth clamp together in a hideous grin. I think from the moment I first noted the look in her eyes I knew I was a goner, because I'd seen that look before in my father's eyes when he came home from the bar, intoxicated beyond the point of comprehension, his fingers itching to find the smooth strip of leather he used to beat me. It seems as though when someone looks at you like this, you'd better beat it, because there really isn't any stopping them.

And there _wasn't_. As I had known from the start, I stood no chance against her power, and she had me on the ropes within maybe the first thirty seconds of our fight, if it could even be _called_ that. I screamed as she kicked me into one of the buildings lining the main drag and I collided into the bricked structure with so much force that I thought I'd broken every bone in my body. As I tumbled to the ground, my lungs cried out for air, but none was coming, and it occurred to me that the blow had probably punctured one of them on top of every other injury that invoked me.

_Oh shit_, I thought, more alarmed at the reaction of my father to this injury and the idea of coming up with an excuse as to just what had happened rather than the actual injury itself. _How am I going to explain THIS?_

Spectra walked slowly toward me until her shadow loomed menacingly over my crumpled form on the pavement. I groaned as I opened my eyes to look up at her woozily, my head spinning and my eyes blurred. I could make out her ardent figure, that perfect hour-glass shape, her fists stiffly pushed into her hips, one of which was out in a defiant gesture that even in my hazy state of mind I found incredibly attractive. She was smirking down at me easily, her eyes seeming to have cooled slightly, maybe because she realized what little challenge I provided and had been hoping for something more.

"Poor boy," she purred, and unhurriedly descended into a kneel beside me, her delicate hands resting gently on her exposed knees, which were parted enough that her uncovered femininity was exposed, and if I wasn't about to be killed, I thought the temptation of masturbating would have been very great, despite the fact that I was already incredibly hard as it was...and I was harder still when she reached out one of those sexy hands and began to stroke my dirty hair.

"That's always been one of your greatest weaknesses, Danny. You can't easily conceal those emotions of yours, can you?" she said softly, her tongue clicking in false sympathy.

She leaned in so that the tip of her nose almost touched mine. Her breath was a mixture of tobacco and cinnamon, and as she regarded me, it stirred a spike of my white hair. Her eyes were glinting softly with what I recognized easily to be lust—indulgence of my amusing display of arousal, I guessed. Her mouth hung open slightly and she was blinking very slowly, sultrily, in a way that would have been enough to make me blow my load right there, and I might have, too, if I wasn't as scared as I was.

"Oh well," she said gently after a long, seemingly never-ending moment of looking me in the eyes without the slightest hint of weakness. "I'd tell you to work on that, but unfortunately you will not live long enough to try."

"I beg to differ," the voice suddenly came confidently, and a blue blast of Ectoplasmic energy collided into Spectra's side, sending her flying off of me and into the same wall I'd crashed with a shriek of pain.

With much trouble, I craned my neck to gaze upon the person who'd saved me, and there he stood, his arms crossed over his chest and his cape fluttering behind him.

Vlad Plasmius.


	4. Chapter 4

In actuality, I had never seen him battle any ghost other than myself, and I guess that until that afternoon not so long ago—just yesterday, actually, but it seems like it could have been a year—I hadn't known really just how much _power _Vlad Plasmius actually had; I knew that there were stronger ghosts than myself, and I thought that since I was getting more powerful, enough so that I could come pretty close to defeating Vlad on my own, there'd be one or two he couldn't fare well against. But in this assumption, I was completely incorrect, because that day I watched in amazement as he took her down without breaking a sweat, and I thought that if he would not have been furious with her, he would have sent her into the Ghost Zone uninterestedly without toying much.

But he _was _furious…or, rather, that composed way in which he gets angry—his face remains very calm and he doesn't allow himself to get worked up and appear anything less than composed, forcing a smirk on his face no matter how upset he is—and making sure she suffered seemed to be his first priority. Though I was slipping out of consciousness pretty quickly—which Spectra was not to blame so much as my father, because the pain, like electric shocks, sparked from rod-shaped indents across my body, rather than the one mark on my chest where her sharp high-heeled shoe had connected, although it _did _really hurt—I managed to witness the majority of the slaughtering, which began after he'd blasted her away from me.

Disregarding me completely, he stomped over to where she lay in a heap at the foot of the building—oh the irony, I had thought dreamily as I stared at her; she didn't move, but her assistant who had been watching gleefully as she beat me quickly ran to protect her. Obviously, if his mistress didn't stand a chance against him, challenging the man would secure his second death inevitable, but he did anyway, and I guessed that they'd probably never heard of Vlad Plasmius, let alone fought him. Needless to say, Bertrand also endured the same fate as I, and he was flung into a wall. However, being much less stable than myself, or Spectra, for that matter, as we all came to realize, instead of hitting the wall and tumbling down to the unforgiving ground beneath, he simply stuck with a _splat_.

This sound seemed to awaken Spectra from the haze she'd fallen into—much like the haze of pain I'd been in while she loomed over me and touched my hair—and she pushed her body from the ground, and met with the not-so-pleasant sight—or I would assume, because if I hadn't been writhing in pain, I might have thought it funny—of her assistant reduced to a green smear marring the surface of the bricked building, she drew in a tight gasp. The surprise and pain-driven emotions left her face then, and undiluted rage replaced them. Her ungodly white teeth bared and her green eyes flared red briefly. As she stood, her fists clenched tightly at her sides. A low growl escaped her throat as she stared Vlad down—which is not the smartest approach, of course, but I suppose she was too blinded by rage to use her brain—, her face flushing a deep shade of red, because she apparently can't conceal rage like the man who was saving me.

As it stood, I was too far gone from reality to really realize what was happening, exactly; of course, I knew that Vlad Plasmius had stepped in to save my life and was now destroying Spectra as if he was swatting a fly—a dead one, if that—but I hadn't made any connection in regards to what this _meant _exactly. I was not wondering why he had done this for me, or what he meant to achieve by doing it, because I had almost fallen into a half-sleep. I was not conscious enough to produce very in-depth thought, but just awake that I could react to what was happening around me. Later, I would have too much thinking for my brain to handle, but until then I was content to be left in this state of blissful ignorance.

"Who do you think you _are_?" Spectra hissed, her fists clenching and unclenching rapidly, her legs spread widely as if in a fighting stance. "My fight is with _him_!"

Vlad observed her coolly, unfazed, one hand stroking the stiff black hairs on his chin, the other holding his elbow. "Fight? It looked to me as though you were preparing to engage in sexual activity with him."

Her eyes flashed red again and her fingers wiggled as if she were trying to control herself, but the snarl left and in its place there was a disgusting smirk, one that was lustful and excited but somehow processing deep undertones of maliciousness not too terribly hard to detect—_I_ could read them, after all. Anyone, no matter their condition—unless they were comatose, or dead, I suppose—could have taken one look at her and known she was crazed, perhaps also a sex offender of some sort if you happened to notice the lust that was shining in her eyes and tugging on her lips, which might have been very attractive if I was a little more conscious, but I guess it would take another flash of her privates beneath her skirt to get me up again...though it was not as if my erection had ever _left_.

"Maybe I was," she said purred, and flashed her grin at me where I lay and threw in a sultry wink for good measure. Turning back to Vlad, however, she seemed to sober up a bit and said, "Does that matter to you?"

"It does, in fact," Vlad said, removing his hand from his beard and crossing his arms over his chest. "And I'm _afraid _that if you desire this so badly, you'll have to go through me first."

She smirked at him, seeming to regain most of her composure, because now she seemed content to toy with Vlad's emotions; I watched her run her tongue over her lips as she ran her eyes over the length of his body, and I figured vaguely she must be studying him in search of ammunition, something to use against him to hinder him because she must be able to sense the strength he possessed. However, she would not get far.

After a moment of studying him, she began softly, staring him down in the same seductive way she had me, "Why do you wear that terribly _long _coat, hon? Do you have something to hide?"

Vlad, I realized immediately, was in no mood to stand there while this ghost-whore critiqued his genitals, and before she could continue in her belittling, he kicked her in the left breast with such force that she shrieked and collapsed to the ground, clutching the damaged body part. Later, as I tried to remove my mind from the subject of my father's arrest, I would tell myself he did a great justice to all men who've been judged by women for their size, and even though it was mainly a ploy to cheer myself up, childishly I really did think it was pretty cool.

What was _cooler_, though, was the fact that when Spectra collapsed to the ground to hold her dented breast, her skirt turned up and I got an even _better _look at her femininity.

Yes, it was a great justice, and because I was so far gone from reality that I did not know any better—because I was, in reality, in the presence of my arch enemy—I couldn't help but moan softly, "_Holy fucking shit._"

Vlad would prevent me from laying eyes on further exposure of the woman, but that was all right; I had enough of Spectra as it was.

* * *

A/N:

God, Danny is one lucky boy. Damn it. Aside from the alcoholic father thing, I really envy you, Danny Boy ;)

~DM/P


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